


none of those lines seemed to be about you or me

by kimaracretak



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Badbrains Babies, F/M, Gen, Past Character Death, regardless of ship tags this is basically vax/keyleth + vax/kash because this ot3 is Important, silence and hair braiding as bad coping mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-09-17 08:42:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9314015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/pseuds/kimaracretak
Summary: (word by word and line by line / i follow your voice through the fire / and nothing will disarm my mind / to cut the ties that bind): It wasn't worth it, he thinks. Keyleth corners him and Vex in one of the smaller kitchens in the thin grey dawn before the rest of the castle stirs, presses mugs of coffee into their hands and her lips to their cheeks. Vax has no words for either of them, which is not new, but Vex is so silent it scares him.Or; Vax, Keyleth, and things that are so simple only when they are not





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mickleborger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mickleborger/gifts).



> for the prompt: _I think you are beautiful and I would like to kiss you. I can think up some clever lines, if you’d prefer. But I wanted to say that, first. (None of those lines seemed to be about you or me)_
> 
> summary quote from kamelot, 'the ties that bind'
> 
> possibly this got away from me but i think you know you have only yourself to blame, nat

Vax has always loved with his whole heart. It is easy, he thinks, when your heart is so small. There is your mother and your sister, and then there is only your sister. And then there is only your sister, _forever_.

 

**

 

Vex is constant, Vex is everything. Even after they start collecting others — Grog and Pike, Tiberius and Keyleth and Percy — it is always the two of them, with their own jokes, their own shared watches.

Of the rest, it is Keyleth who takes him by surprise. Under everything she is _light_ , spilling through cracks he had never even noticed and stumbling towards good on a path so close to his he thinks he could reach out and touch her, were she not so far ahead of him.

He loves her, slowly and unexpectedly, and Vax says nothing about it long after he has given name to the feelings that threaten to suffocate him every time he looks at her. He intends to go on saying nothing about it, too, until he finds himself flat on his back on cold stone, mind fuzzy with charms and blood loss, and Keyleth blurry and concerned hovering over him.

So: _Hey, Keyleth, you know I love you_  isn't the best way to do this. But it's a truth that she deserves to share, and he'll do ... he'll do whatever she asks him to, with that.

 

**

 

The sky crumbles over Emon in a perfect mirror of the cracks splintering across Vax's family, and his hands and heart shred to bloody ribbons the harder he tries to hold on to the pieces.

At night, he curls around Keyleth, presses himself to her chest and listens to her steady heartbeat as she runs her fingers through his hair. It is such a small thing, against the enormity of the fallen world around them, but he has never really known how to love if it did not mean fighting the world.

 

**

 

Vex stops teasing him about Keyleth after she dies. The chill of her words' absence lingers, settling into his heart as easily as the chill weight of her dead body has settled itself in his hands. He watches his sister walk the Whitestone gardens with Zahra, the two of them wrapped so tightly around each other Vax isn't sure how they can move at all, and anything he could say about them to bring back any light falls apart before he can open his mouth.

How can there be anything left to say, after he offered himself to Her and She accepted but left him anyway?

Sometimes he had wished for his sister to be quiet, but not like this. Keyleth corners him and Vex in one of the smaller kitchens in the thin grey dawn before the rest of the castle stirs, presses mugs of coffee into their hands and her lips to their cheeks. Vax has no words for either of them, which is not new, but Vex is so silent it scares him, all the more so because he _knows_  she is not this silent with anyone else.

Keyleth speaks for them all, says, _don't do this to me again._  Says, _I almost lost you, and I can't lose either of you._  Between them, Vex's fingernails dig deep enough to nearly break the skin of their palms, and Vax closes his hand so tightly around hers he feels the bones shift under his grip.

There are no stories for this, this life they should never have had to navigate. His face is damp, the thin cotton of his nightshirt is damp where Vex's head rests. He can't tell which of them is crying. Maybe they all are.

Sunlight is breaking against the window by the time Zahra arrives, takes one look at them and murmurs _oh, darlings_  before trying to find breakfast among the unfamiliar cupboards. Vex disentangles herself from the bench to help, and Vax looks away as soon as Zahra's tail curls around his sister's wrist, feeling like he's intruding on something.

His gaze falls instead to Keyleth's hands, resting next to his on the table. A month, a week ago, he would have taken her hand in his without hesitating. Now, without Vex between them, he is reminded that his hands are held by death Herself, and they are so cold that not even Keyleth's flame could warm them.

Keyleth runs her fingertips along the back of his hand anyway, light but sure and so unlike her panicked search for wings across his back in the tomb. Vex and Zahra are talking quietly behind him ( _alive, alive_ ), Keyleth is warm and unflinching ( _alive, alive_ ) next to him, and he cannot stop himself from loving her for it.

He almost wishes he could.

 

**

 

"You know, for someone apparently intent on not letting his sister out of his sight, you're doing a real good job of avoiding her."

Vax doesn't bother finding an answer for Kash, just listens to his daggers hit the practise target, one after another after another, before they fly back to his belt and he plucks them out again.

"Hey, _dickface._ "

Vax whirls around, throws the keen dagger behind him without looking and _knows_  that it struck true. "How the fuck is any of this your business?"

Kash is lounging against his spear, sleeves rolled up enough that Vax can just barely see the edges of his scars peeking through. "Oh, wow, I don't know," he says, and Vax wonders if there's genuine pain underlying his sarcastic tone. "Could it be because your sulking makes your sister miserable, which in turn makes _my_  sister miserable? Or maybe because when I raised Vex — you're welcome, by the way — I actually felt this Raven Queen you're so terrified of? Or maybe — "

Vax crosses the training ground in three long strides, grabs Kash's wrist before he can finish his sentence. Kash flinches, and his eyes narrow, but he doesn't throw a punch like Vax had half expected him to. It is this, more than anything, that makes him realise Kash is serious. "What do you mean, you _felt_ the Raven Queen?" His voice is unsteady.

"The resurrection ritual," Kash says. "You know I get my powers from ..." His stares at his arm, and Vax stares, too, at the space where Kash's scars lie black and inert and so much deeper than should ever be borne. "Well. Whatever showed up in that tomb sure as hell wasn't _that_  dark."

"But I saw Her," Vax says, thinking of the blurred faceless form that's taken up residence behind his eyelids, the whispers in his dreams.  "I saw Her, and She ..." Swallowed everything, he doesn't say. Almost took everything from me.

"But She nothing," Kash says, harsh but surprisingly not unkind. "I know something about being the light for a god's darkness. And trust me, asshole, your job is gonna be way fucking easier than mine."

Vax snorts incredulously. "Easy? Nothing about this is going to be easy."

"Not if you keep acting like this it's not," Kash agrees. "But of all the people you have ... you're so lucky, and you don't even know how to see it. _Idiot._ "

Vax thinks of the tomb, moonlight spilling from Zahra's skin over Vex's body. He thinks of Vex ( _alive, alive_ ), and suddenly he can't bear to be away from her any longer. "She _died_ ," he says, and those words are never going to become easier to say. "I'm not — she wasn't — that's not —"

"She came back," Kash says. "And my wife didn't seem to notice. That's fucking — you know, I have a sister too. And I talk to her. I talk to all the people I care about."

"Fine." Vax sighs, and finally drops Kash's wrist. "Fine, I'll ... it does mean everything, what you did for her."

"Yeah, yeah." Kash yanks his sleeves down. "Get out of my face."

 

**

 

Dinner is small and mostly quiet — Percy is off somewhere with Cassandra, Grog and Pike are in the temple, Scanlan and Kash are gods-know-where — but Vex is smiling again, and that makes all the difference. Keyleth vanishes to her room as soon as she's finished eating, and Vax grabs his sister's hand before she can leave too. Zahra glances between them and smiles.

"Come find me later, darling," she says, getting up and pressing a quick kiss to Vex's lips. "I think you two have a lot to talk about."

Vex waits until she's gone to say, "I think I understand you now more than ever."

"I don't know what you mean," he says, and she must know he's lying, she _must_ , but all she does is hug him so tightly he thinks he might break.

"My idiot brother," she mutters as she pulls away. "My reckless, _wonderful_  idiot brother that I love. Don't do that again. If I have to trade for you I've only got one soul."

He would, though, easier than breathing. He would break his soul into as many pieces as he needed to to save his family. So instead he says, "I love you too, Stubby. Here, I'll even do your hair all nice for your girlfriend to prove it."

Vex laughs weakly. "You don't need to prove anything to me, you know," she says, but she slides down to to floor in front of him anyway.

 

**

 

Keyleth opens her door at the first rap of his knuckles against wood. "Vax, hi." Her eyes are bright in her too-pale face. "Do you want to come in?"

"Yeah," he says. "Kiki..." He's not sure what she reads in his eyes, but she tugs him inside her room and shuts the door behind him.

Her hands are warm cupping his cheeks. "You shouldn't have to be scared, Vax. We'd all fight for you. I would..." Keyleth's hands slip from his face as she pulls him fully into her arms. He can feel the press of her fingertips into his shoulder blades, ten tiny aching points that won't bruise, no matter how much he wants them to.

"I know." Vax presses his face into the crook of her neck, wonders if he could drown there, among the curl of her hair and the faint scent of berries that never seems to leave her. "I know. Keyleth, can I ... can I stay here tonight?"

"Yes," she says softly. "I would ... I would like that a lot."

Keyleth pulls back just enough to press their foreheads together. They're still close enough that he can almost feel the rise and fall of her chest as she breathes. "Can I..." The words are still so hard. "Can I kiss you?" Vax can hear his voice break across the question, as they have all broken across so many things in the past week.

He's ready for her to say _no,_ to say _wait_ , and he will give her anything she asks. But she says nothing, because words have never been good to them. There is only her hand, small and sure, tilting his chin up as their mouths meet.

For a moment, he is no longer cold.


End file.
